


Mmm Whatcha Say, Or, The Memeification of King T'Challa

by Kerryl



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: All about an unfortunate pun, Fluff, Gift Fic, Let's pretend IW didn't happen, Meme Lord Shuri (Marvel), Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, POV Multiple, Social Media, T'Challa gets teased, kind of crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 19:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17494169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerryl/pseuds/Kerryl
Summary: In which Peter asks about a pun, T'Challa accidentally makes it, and Shuri ensures he won't forget it.Written for Annie.





	Mmm Whatcha Say, Or, The Memeification of King T'Challa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StellaHunterOfArtemis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellaHunterOfArtemis/gifts).



** Peter **

Peter Parker, high school student, Gen Z kid, spidersuit-wearing and web-slinging superhero extraordinaire, has found himself in Wakanda.  
And as though it isn’t enough to be casually in the very mysterious, newly-revealed-to-be-the-most-technologically-advanced-in-the-world country, he’s in the palace. There is amazing tech. There are gorgeous views (suddenly, a lot of incredible Wakanda landscape photos appear on an anonymous but popular Instagram account that so far has only posted shots of Queens and Manhattan from impossible skyscraper-like angles).  
Heck, he’s met Princess Shuri, who is a mixture of higher IQ than Bruce Banner or Tony Stark, the energy of Ned Leeds, and wicked sass somewhat similar to that of Michelle Jones but a unique brand he has never witnessed before and immediately and probably hopelessly aspires towards.

_(*Voicenote from Peter*_  
MJ: tldr  
Peter: it was a voice note  
Ned: @MJ she’s awesome  
Peter: ^^^  
MJ: Yeah duh she’s PRINCESS SHURI  
Ned: I wanna meet her  
Peter: dude if we all made friends with her imagine the pranks. the sass. all the possibilities.  
Ned: we could take over the world  
Peter: that’s a little more supervillain than I was thinking  
MJ: No. Ned’s right. This is happening.  
Ned: Yes! I’m gonna design a supervillain costume  
MJ: Also you’re right, Pete, it’s kinda hopeless for you to try to have that much sass  
Peter: hey!) 

But also he’s been meeting some other seriously awesome people. Like Special Ambassador Nakia. And General Okoye. And the KING. Who’s also Black Panther, the super mysterious, super cool superhero. (He needs a better vocabulary. He will cave to MJ’s pointed looks flitting between him and _Roget’s Thesaurus._ )  
Speaking of this last personage- Peter suddenly wakes up one warm Wakandan night with a question echoing in his ears. It is an undeniably dumb question, but it has haunted his thoughts since Wakanda announced itself to the world, and now he’s _here_ , and could probably find out the answer, if he was willing to brave the extremely high probability of being thought an idiot.  
Who is he kidding? Of course he’s willing. He really wants to answer that question. And the Wakandans have been really nice so far, so what the heck?

So the next day, Peter decides to take the leap. “Um, Your Highness-” he begins hesitantly, trying to figure out how to broach the subject.  
“Yes?” prompts the king, prepared to be amused.  
“O-okay, um, when you,” _Deep breath, Peter, you can do this –_ “when you see something, like, really dumb happen, are you ever tempted to say ‘Wakanda nonsense is this?’” _Oh God what have I done._  
T’Challa stops and stares at Peter, but he quickly collects himself and answers, “No, I don’t.”  
And there’s the answer. Ah well. At least T’Challa didn’t laugh at him. He quickly clears his throat and changes the subject.

 

** T’Challa **

“-when you see something, like, really dumb happen, are you ever tempted to say ‘Wakanda nonsense is this?’”  
T’Challa is generally an honest man. So when this very Shuri-like question is presented to him by a nervous-but-curious teenage superhero, his first thought is-  
_Yes, of course I do._  
Because he has a sense of humor, whatever his sister says, and that’s an obvious pun and naturally it will pop into his head.  
_But_ he’s absolutely not going to admit that out loud ever because he’s the king of Wakanda and the Black Panther and he has _dignity_. Dignified people, he informs Nakia later, do not make juvenile puns about the kingdom they rule and protect.  
(“If you say so,” Nakia replies noncommittally, because she has known T’Challa too long and is very aware of the fact that he’s trying to convince himself more than her.)

One fateful day, not long after Peter’s initial question, T’Challa is sitting in Shuri’s lab, looking over some reports and holograms. Part of being king – a _big_ part of being king – is administrative work. It’s an especially big part of being a king who, having just tossed out a centuries-old foreign policy of what genius Princess Shuri in her great wisdom and prodigious vocabulary insightfully describes as _no foreign policy_ , is faced with figuring out how to engage with the rest of the world. And T’Challa, King of Wakanda, Protector of the Realm, he who wears the sacred mantle of the Black Panther, does not shun his duty. So – he is looking through some proposals for diplomatic missions.  
They’re bad.  
They’re so bad.  
They’re ridiculous, and he’s been reading equally awful documents all day, and he’s tired and he’s frustrated, and he’s maybe probably lost a little bit or a lot of his brain-to-mouth filter, and he is about to really, really regret that and everything leading up to it, because after perusing the first paragraph of what seems like the hundredth dumb proposal (it is only the twenty-sixth), he says -  
quietly-  
under his breath-  
with great pain in every syllable-  
_“Wakanda nonsense is this?”_

 

** Shuri **

Shuri just happens to be near a security monitor when it happens.  
_“Wakanda nonsense is this?”_  
She spins on her heel, openmouthed, staring at the monitor with the feed from the emptiest part of her lab.  
Onscreen, T’Challa, who often sits in that corner, freezes and looks around to see if anyone’s there. Apparently satisfied, he turns back to the holotablet in his hands.  
He forgets that Shuri has security cameras in the lab.  
Cameras that have video _and_ audio.  
_Extremely_ good quality video and audio because this is Shuri’s lab, and she has standards for her tech.  
A slow smile starts to spread on the princess’ face. What an opportunity.

It is the mere matter of a moment to download and cut the feed to the few seconds where T’Challa unthinkingly whispers a terrible pun. It is the matter of only another few moments to slow the clip down to half its original speed, saturate the colours, and freeze the frame as he finishes the word _this_ so she can add a dramatic soundtrack to his anguished and paused face.

She saves her result and plays it.  
It’s beautiful. It’s a work of cinematic genius. It will haunt T’Challa’s nightmares for weeks – no, months – to come.  
Satisfied and smirking already, Shuri pulls up the Dora Milaje group chat. (It’s not _really_ a Dora Milaje group chat- over time it has accumulated members not in the force, but whatever.) It’s technically a spam chat, filled with jokes and deep, bantering conversations, but it is about to witness something unprecedented in its so-far-short but glorious history.  
Shuri types out, _This is my best work yet_ , attaches her lovingly edited video, and presses send.

 

** Nakia **

Her phone chimes between meetings and she pulls it out to check. Shuri has sent a video. Curious, Nakia taps on the notification.  
Eleven seconds later, she’s dashed out of the conference room, past her confused employees making their way in, to duck into the corridor, and laugh, and replay the video immediately.

 

** Okoye **

General Okoye is among the most highly respected people in Wakanda. She is strong, she is smart, she is principled – and she has a sense of humor, so nobody in the elite Dora Milaje training session she’s leading is surprised when she starts laughing at something on her phone. Especially when their phones also chime and they see what so amused the general.  
The laughter is carried up by the gentle breeze to Shuri’s open lab window.

 

** T’Challa **

There’s laughter from outside Shuri’s lab, and T’Challa looks up from his tortured reading, curious. Shuri, back from her snack break, is determinedly pressing her lips together and not lifting her gaze from the schematics she’s redrawing.

Call it intuition. Call it the supernatural powers of the Black Panther. Call it the experience of an older brother who knows his sister very well.

T’Challa senses danger.

“Brother,” Shuri says suddenly, interrupting his thoughts, “I have to watch some footage, don’t mind the noise.”  
T’Challa’s eyes narrow, but he says graciously, “Go ahead.”  
Her answering smile is entirely too pleased.  
Shuri sets up a holoscreen and increases the volume on the nearest speaker, then pulls up a video.  
Of him.  
Slowed down.  
Saying… _that._  
Suddenly the laughter outside the window makes sense.  
Oh no.

 

** Six months later **

_“Waakaanndaa noonnseeense iis thiiisss?”_

T’Challa’s groan muffles the dramatic music. “Please,” he says to the ceiling. “Please stop.”  
There is a snicker from around the corner. It cannot be denied that the king flinched at the too-familiar beginning syllable of the video, and Ayo, clutching her phone, knows perfectly well that the king is also aware of this. Because it has been going on for six months. T’Challa can never predict when someone will play the video he so dreads, and the Dora Milaje are not an elite special force for nothing – they made, early on, the obvious tactical agreement to be completely random about when they play the video, while also spacing out the instances to avoid habituation. (Her Aneka, Ayo thinks fondly, really knows her psychology.)

Ayo saunters past T’Challa, still stiff in the middle of the corridor. “My king,” she says, keeping her tone respectful, but not bothering to suppress her grin.  
“Captain Ayo,” he replies in a regal tone, but his expression is that of a man resigned to being betrayed. She takes pity on him and strikes up a business-like conversation about a task force the king and general had put under her command. Relaxing slightly, T’Challa listens to her progress and asks some questions. He’s a good king, Ayo thinks, not for the first time, because he has ideas that are both clever and implementable, he encourages other inputs, he delegates, and he cares.

He also can be really easy to tease.

So when the conversation ends and the king walks past Ayo, she whispers, _“Waakaaann-”_  
“NOT AG-”

 

** Somewhere in Queens **

“You have just received a message from Princess Shuri, tagged ‘Confidential’.”  
Peter crouches on a rooftop, frowning. What could Shuri – now counted a close friend and honorary member of the SpideySquad – be saying that’s confidential? (But also, she’s _Princess Shuri_ , so it’s kinda awesome that she’s sending him something confidential.) “Put it through.”  
It’s a video file. Now genuinely excited/concerned, he asks Karen to open it. And his jaw drops behind the mask.

Later, people will tweet about seeing Spiderman dancing on a roof that night, whooping out loud and yelling something, over and over.  
It sounds like, _“I KNEW IT!”_

**Author's Note:**

> (This was inspired by a tumblr post: http://d0cpr0fess0r.tumblr.com/post/171099308109)
> 
> For those of you who don't recognize the name Ayo: she is one of the main characters from "World of Wakanda" by Roxane Gay and Yona Harvey; it's a prequel to Ta-Nehisi Coates' Black Panther series, and is the story of two former Dora Milaje members, Ayo and Aneka, who are in love. I haven't read the comic yet, but having heard about these characters I wanted to give at least one of them a cameo- Ayo was portrayed by Florence Kasumba in the movie. I gave her an arbitrary military title (and Nakia got an arbitrary diplomatic one).
> 
> (The title, btw, is supposed to reference the syntax of the full title for the movie Birdman - just cause why not)
> 
> To Annie aka StellaHunterOfArtemis - happy birthday!


End file.
